The Persistence of Memory
The Surrealism art movement is characterized by odd, dream-like settings with impossible yet somehow believable imagery. Salvador Dali was one of the most prominent artists during the movement, which lasted from the 1910s through the 1930s. He created several very well-known paintings, the most popular of which is The Persistence of Memory. It was painted in 1931 in oil paint and today it resides in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Many people know it for its strange landscape and melting clock faces, but there is a lot more to it than that.
The Persistence of Memory is a rather bizarre, moody piece. It lies on a nine-and-a-half by thirteen-inch canvas, but the visuals it describes offer a much larger setting. The painting depicts a flat beachscape with cliffs and the ocean in light in the background. This gives the entire painting a plane and a location to insert the viewer into and causes it to feel much bigger of a piece than it is. The foreground is dark and smoothly painted. A light brown box juts in on the left, and on top of it lies a golden pocket watch that appears to be melting down the side of the plane. A lone fly sits atop the clock face. Another red pocket watch crawling with ants lies face down closer to the viewer. On the back end of the box, a barren, jagged tree branch sprouts, and draped over its one scraggly limb lies another liquified pocket watch, this time in silver. It almost seems to be blowing in the wind, which is a strange description for an object that is ordinarily made of solid metal. To the right of the box lies a grotesque and nearly unidentifiable shape in a desaturated light flesh tone. Another melting silver pocket watch lies limp over the figure’s form. Dali intended to explore the concept of time in a dreamscape by literally distorting clocks and creating a purposely confusing scene. It gives the audience the feeling that they have stepped into a place where the flow of time has become warped and yet still eerily familiar. He also included personal connections. The landscape and cliffs depicted in The Persistence of Memory are the same cliffs where he grew up in Figueras, Spain (Basquin). Dali often included scenes and items from his private life in his works.
Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in Spain. He grew up studying the writings of Freud and art movements like cubism, futurism, and realism. These studies heavily influenced the following artwork and his dive into the surrealism movement. Some may see The Persistence of Memory as visual gibberish, but in reality, it contains some very meaningful descriptions. One example is the strangely distorted face-like form that Dali painted. It appears to depict a stretched and melting human face with impossibly long eyelashes draped over a small clump of rocks. It has been suggested that “the amorphous figure… is a self-portrait… The object seems unconscious under the weight of the limp watch on top of it” (Basquin). Dali may have inserted himself into his painting, making it more of a self-portrait than a landscape despite the scenic background. Author Jackie De Burca wrote in her biography Salvador Dali at Home that “the large central creature [in The Persistence of Memory] was undoubtedly created in Dali’s incredible imagination, although it could certainly represent the artist” (p. 74) The form undoubtedly has some of Dali’s personal influence given that it came from his incredible imagination.
Dali first became interested in surrealism in the late 1920s when he was around twenty-three. His early surrealist paintings were hardly more than curvilinear shapes, uneven lines, and assorted objects and figures floating on a plain background. However, these few paintings were the precursor to his “richly productive period (roughly 1929–39) in which he created his finest works… [Dali began to implement] the haunting images for which [he] would become famous: the soft watches, crutches, grasshoppers and egg-shaped objects, among others, that are his artistic trademarks” (Secrest). Dali had the rare ability to tap into his subconscious for motivation. His pieces feel so dreamlike because he took inspiration directly from his dreams. Looking at The Persistence of Memory is like briefly traveling into an alternate universe where none of the usual laws of physics and reality apply. A viewer may feel disoriented or even frustrated because of the ways the piece messes with the eye. The presence of fore- and background cements the canvas as containing a landscape, but the lack of middle ground forces the eye to jump uncharacteristically over a long depicted distance. Dali’s talent for invoking such deep intent and emotion in his work without the usual indicators is truly remarkable.
The Persistence of Memory was painted four years after Dali’s first experimentation with surrealism and it has cemented itself as one of the most influential and recognizable surrealist pieces. Most people know it as the painting with the melting clocks, and the iconic work has been referenced countless times in pop culture. Dali even reprised the famous piece in a 1954 painting of the same medium and size titled The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory. It was painted to “mark the death of his surrealist style” (McNeese, p. 100). The newer painting contains all the recognizable clocks and settings of the original, but the beach landscape has been flooded with water, and all the foreground elements are splitting into cubes and cylinders, as if perfectly sliced. There are also fish-like creatures and a couple of sticks that were not included in the original. The piece is an interesting expansion upon The Persistence of Memory, delving further into the theme of warped reality that is the backbone of surrealism.
Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory will continue to be one of the most iconic surrealist paintings ever created. Its melting pocket watches and strangely familiar landscape push the boundaries of human imagination and leave viewers with questions that have no answers: but such a successful, beautiful piece does not require answers.
Works Cited
Basquin, Kit. “Salvador Dali: Images of the Surreal.” School Arts, vol. 91, no. 8, Apr. 1992, p. 33+. Gale OneFile: Fine Arts, Link. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.
De Burca, Jackie. Salvador Dali at Home. White Lion Publishing, 2018.
McNeese, Tim. Salvador Dali. Infobase Publishing, 2006.
Miller, John J. “Master of the surreal.” National Review, vol. 69, no. 11, 12 June 2017, pp. 38+. Gale OneFile: Fine Arts, Link. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.
Secrest, Meryle. “The tumultuous life and love of Salvador Dali.” Smithsonian, vol. 17, Oct. 1986, pp. 62+. Gale OneFile: Fine Arts, Link. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.
